Beautiful Day, Busy Day!

I GOT a lot done today, with a head start before I had breakfast by beginning a load of clothes and doing the dishes. The back yard was beautiful in the sunshine, with the golden leaves from the neighbor's tree glowing in the back right-hand corner.
My friend Barb is coming tomorrow (from Michigan) and is going to stay with us for a few days before I leave (for Michigan) on Thursday (without her) - yes, you read this correctly - so I am getting "the guest room" ready.
In preparing for the trip, I am packing a quart size Ziplock bag with teeny, tiny bottles of fluids and am limiting myself to one small carry-on bag so I will be able to take my laptop. I will find time, I'm sure (hahahahahahaha!), to rack up more of a word count for NaNoWrimo, even though I'll be attending a work conference. I hope I get to the electric outlets before anyone else at the airports!
After a little house cleaning today I picked up my brother and we went to the local library book sale. He brought two big bags - one for each of us to fill. Look who I found for sale! Not a book, but a very special little person. He had his own balloon, but I didn't buy him. He told me he was meant for a little girl with blond hair and wanted to wait for her. No problem. I know men and their blondes.
We waded through lots of books. I found a delicious Maira Kalman book. I'd already bought several from Amazon and was happy to find one I didn't have - for a mere $1.50, sans postage. I saw my friend Sylvia at the sale and we went upstairs to look at foreign language books because she'd seen some Indian religious tracts, we think, with some comic book-style drawings. I found a great dictionary - English descriptions with the foreign word after - and Sylvia found a great Hebrew "dictionary" with the word and drawings. I think we'll use these for collage and trade some pages. One of the book sale volunteers let us in the "secret" storage room (not really so secret) and there were boxes and boxes of books bound for the sale where I will volunteer. There were lots and it made my fingers itch, wondering what treasure was inside them.
I saw a wonderful book at the sale with a big price tag. I denied myself the book, hoping it would remain unsold and make it to our book sale. (That's where the unsold books go.) But at the last minute I sneaked back (right beside Sylvia; I don't even think she saw me!) and I grabbed it and bought it. After all, it was for a good cause: the library! The cover says "Great Ideas." It's a huge hardbound book, a sort of self-promotion piece by the Container Corporation of America. They must have underwritten all of these artworks and along with them are great quotations.
Here's some examples. Well, I guess you can see why I didn't want to take any chances on losing such a find as this. I've regretted some purchases, but regretted more the things I didn't get when I wanted them.
After the library it was shopping for a pair of tennis shoes while my brother perused Barnes & Noble. Then we went to have lunch at the Golden Arches. I indulged in a small chocolate shake. Good while cold. I took my brother home and then went grocery shopping. (yuck!) Sunshine when I went in, dark when I came out. Waaa! It seems on one of the most beautiful days yet of November I was inside all darn day. But it's only the first day! That's right!
Oh, before I forget I have painted journal pages (with no journaling yet), and I've discovered what Kelly Kilmer said is true: Don't think about it too much. I just started sticking some things down and like them. Also, this morning, when I peeked inside the journal, I found the shoes I had cut out were turned over and I liked the back side more than the real looking shoes.
And the face with the huge eye got all mixed up and twisted together with a cutout hand, since nothing was glued down yet, and I really like that too!
Have a great Monday tomorrow - femminismo

Sticky Fingers . . . Gooey Paper

PAINTED journaling once again. I think I told you about the Kelly Kilmer class I took and the little book I made there. Well, I have nearly all the pages painted and am ready to paste in my images and papers and then add some words.
I have been keeping track of my dreams - and not that this phrase is overused in letters and journaling, but - yes, I've titled the first page "DREAMS." (thanks, Neko!)
I've even started going through a bag of journaling "trash" with odds and ends of everything I've liked the look of and couldn't throw away. I have taken just two or three items and torn them up and glued them down. (Will the journaling ever get done??)
I know I've had plenty of great dreams. One was so realistic I still get dizzy thinking of it. I was balanced far above the earth - high enough so the houses were about the size of match boxes - and I'm standing on a hollow metal tube next to someone else with better balance. (I'm hoping, anyway.)
I am doing pretty good but all of a sudden it hits me that I'm losing my balance. (Of course, as in dreams, I am looking at myself doing all of this.) I reach out my hand to the person sort of next to me - oh oh! getting dizzy visualizing this - and say, "Would you mind?"
I don't know what she says - I think it was a she; I know it was - because the dream ends! And the dream was in color.
Another dream I had I looked at myself in a mirror. This was a first for me; seeing myself in a dream.
Don't you love these "Kelly Kilmer Colors"? You mix highly pigmented acrylics with matte medium, paint and dry (hair dryer) and rub the pages in-between each color. The green page stuck and some paper ripped off, but then the coat of yellow went right onto the "new" paper.
While I was waiting for the DREAMS letters' glue to dry I started painting over the pages in a book on recycling. I can't get over the paradox - or genius - of finding this book right when I wanted something else to paint. (That's the book with the waxed paper between the pages. One side is blank for a while, which will be perfect for writing in ... someday.
Some of these pages might look familiar to you. I am tearing apart magazines. Yay! Then I can finally recycle them *really* and finally. And yes, you too can have a self! Just install it from this handy kit. (I've already used what was in the box.) What would one look like do you think? Would it have exotic ingredients you mix and drink?
So dreams ... what are some of the other ones I've had? I've written them down and would really like to have had some cool ones - like bears talking to me and telling me very intelligent, witty, meaningful thoughts, but I don't have dreams like that. Maybe I will tonight - femminismo
p.s. The last photo was taken on self-portrait Wednesday, but I didn't think you'd want to see me close up. Too many wrinkles! That's me up there, fourth bird up from the leader. (click on pics)

I Hate It When ...

YOU know what people say when they haven't posted in a while. Well, I hate it when people say that because it's evident they've been doing something they *think* is more important than keeping us up to date on their lives.
We went to Montana the week after I started my new job and things just sort of fell apart blogwise. Thank you to anyone who still bothered to check this dusty space.
The new job is going fine but it is busy. There's some relearning to do with certain tasks.
Then this past Friday we said bon voyage to Catherine at Valley Art Gallery. Difficult to part with someone so dear. Food helped. (Some of it's in this picture. This is why I made chai spiced cheesecake.) We all had plates of good stuff and sent her off in great style ... I think!
Saturday, the weather was lovely. Much too beautiful to spend inside.
Today, Sunday, I took a Wisdom Book-making class from Kelly Kilmer at Art on a Lark, a lovely space in our town. Painting paper was so much fun. The book was longer horizontally than vertically, a new way to work on a book. Here is the front (green) and inside (pink). It's bound up with a painted and stamped strip of canvas.
The paints had lots of true pigment and were transparent with gloss gel added. Here's one of the pages, with blue, orange, green paints added, and maybe Payne's gray.
A look at the outside before the front was done. Oh, and the signatures had to be sewn in, but that was really simple. (I love simple. Then the pages were painted (that's up above). And here is the book with the strips of paper and "focal object" that we moved around until we thought we had it right. Must go now - femminismo
p.s. The figure on the front is a Russian clown photographed by Richard Avedon.